Jack’s Walk

Under the category of Be Careful What You Wish For, yesterday’s November blues have turned into today’s November whites. It is very pretty if you look past the mush on the road, and I do like the way the trees look with a blanket of snow, but thundering Jesus it’s made the walking hard. Most of the sidewalks haven’t been shoveled and my winter muscles for tramping are way out of shape. Suddenly it’s the season of boots and bundling up, of wiping Jack’s feet and checking them for salt and of doing the slip and slide on snowy sidewalks and wet floors. It’s also HappyJack™ season and that’s just enough to make it all tolerable.

Frosting, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Bumblebees

Courtesy of Avalus we have a rabble of bumblebees to help chase the November blues away.

All from the first week of October.

The bumblebee on my hand was nice. It was a cold morning and she just buzzed to me, sat down on my hand and seemed to enjoy the heat. My hand hat just been holding a tea mug, so it was extra warm. I improvised some sugarwater of which she drank a drop from my hand and then after about two minutes flew away again.

I love these fuzzy critters.

I love them too, Avalus and it must have been wondrous to have one sit and your hand and stay for so long. Thanks for sharing.

octobees, ©Avalus, all rights reserved

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Jack’s Walk

 

Watching the squirrels scurry, ©voyager, all rights reserved

There’s not a trace of snow left in town, but out in the country we saw highlights of white persisting in pockets here and there in the fields. In the forest, the fallen branches and trees were frosted like cupcakes and the leaves on the ground were wet and nearly silent as we padded along. All but a very few leaves are down now and the trees stand like scratchy wire sculptures against a foreboding gray and gloomy sky. Late autumn has arrived and with it has also come the November blahs and blues. Even Jack seemed tinged with ennui today.

Metal Magic

We’ve received a wonderful surprise from kestrel. She’s making magic and has decided to let us watch the show. This is part 1 of what may be about 5 parts and I am just as in the dark as you about what’s coming next. Kestrel will reveal all one post at a time so make sure to tune in for all the updates. That’s just the way magic should be, full of anticipation and surprises. And now… heeere’s kestrel!

A while back, Marcus posted about some mokume gane he had made, and the exciting adventures he had making it. https://proxy.freethought.online/stderr/2018/03/27/mokume-gane/ I know it’s properly called mokume gane, but I like to think of it as MarcusMetal. (No doubt that will trademarked soon.) Much to my surprise, it arrived at my house early one morning. I immediately leaped up to polish part of it – away from the coffee, mind you – because I knew it was going to be very beautiful and I could not wait to see it. If you look carefully, you can see a pattern of swirls of copper against the nickel in the part that I polished. When I am done and I finish a piece, I will put a patina on the metal that will make the pattern show up in greater contrast.

©kestrel, all rights reserved

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Roses!

DavidinOz has treated us to roses today and they are grand. Just look at those crisp petals, that bright colour and all that beautiful light. Why, I can almost smell them. The photos were taken at the Renmark Rose Festival and the busy bee makes them positively perfect. They’re just the tonic I needed to banish the November blues. Thanks for sharing, David.

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

©David Brindley, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

Today you get voyager’s walk without Jack. I was in Toronto over the weekend to visit a friend so I thought I’d share some shots of Front Street. Everywhere you look the city is gearing up for all that mindless and debt-inducing Christmas shopping and this year it looks like Union Station is going all out Lego. So far they’ve placed 3 giant Legos in the square along with a totally Lego fireplace complete with Lego stockings hung with care. The large white board is also going to be all Lego and it has mind-numbingly small numbers. Lots of numbers, each one waiting for an individual normal size Lego block. It must take a crew of several people days to put it all together. I’ll ask my friend to send me photos of the finished project and I promise to share.

Front Street, looking east, ©voyager, all rights reserved

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Transformation

Kestrel has finally shared some of her jewellery making with us and it’s phenomenal. What starts out as a pile of horsehair becomes ordered and ultimately beautiful at the hands of a master artisan. I’ll let kestrel explain the process…

I’m working on my website and one of the things that needs to be done is to re-shoot all the photos. Since most of my work is custom (in other words, people send me hair from their own horse, and then I make stuff out of it for them) I don’t have things in inventory, and that means I had to re-make all the items in order to take new photos. One of the things I like about my work is being able to transform my materials, whatever they may be but in this case a messy pile of hair, into something orderly and worth having. 

©kestrel, all rights reserved

Some of the braiding was done before it occurred to me to take a photo, but that messy pile of hair is going to be turned into 6 bracelets: 3 that are an 8-strand braid, and 3 that are a 25-strand braid, one each of white, chestnut and black. In case you are wondering: that messy pile of hair is made up of 1,761 individual hairs. That I had to count. On purpose. I don’t usually sit down and figure out things like that, because I just really don’t want to know; it’s a little depressing. But, if one is going to braid hair, one must first count it. 

©kestrel, all rights reserved

Part way finished, you can see the 3 8-strand bracelets are done and I’ve just started on the black 25-strand bracelet. 

 

©kestrel, all rights reserved

All done! It looks very different from how it started out. Now what I have to do is take good photos of each product so that hopefully, people will want one of these made from their own horse’s hair as a keepsake or memento. Just another day (OK, actually it was about two weeks) in the life of a braider. 

Thanks for sharing, kestrel. I’m astonished at the precision and beauty of the finished product. I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work involved, especially the counting! These are surely cherished keepsakes. Why, it’s enough to make me wish for a horse of my own.

 

 

 

 

Tree Tuesday

This week we have glorious fall colour from Avalus,

Lets begin with some brightly coloured leaves from the first of October.

Golden walnut trees, red wild grapes and assorted green plants.

And it was quite good timing, just half a week later, the walnuts were all leafless.

Your timing was perfect, Avalus. All that deep, rich autumn colour shot against a clear blue sky. Thanks so much for sharing.

Herbstfarben, ©Avalus, all rights reserved

Herbstfarben, ©Avalus, all rights reserved

Herbstfarben, ©Avalus, all rights reserved

Signs of Autumn

 

The signs of autumn from Nightjar,

These are the four signs that I look for every year before I can safely declare autumn has arrived. Leaf colour, autumn snowflakes, mushrooms and green grass. I was able to check all four boxes by the end of October, which is good!

 

1. Leaves change colour and glow in the sun

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Dragonfly Rescue

This came in from Avalus at the beginning of October,

And another dragonfly which I rescued from a bakery just on Monday. The staff was about to smash it but then let me have a try with a coffee-glass.

I can’t imagine smashing such a beautiful creature. Good work, Avalus and thanks for sharing.

Libellenrettung, ©Avalus, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

First Snow, ©voyager, all rights reserved

We woke up this morning to the first snow of the season and it was such a pretty sight. I love when the snow first falls and covers the dull browns and grays of the world with a crisp blanket of white. It gets so quiet and today even the sound of passing cars was muffled. We had a lovely, slow stroll around our neighbourhood and the falling snow was mesmerizing. It won’t last, though. Already it’s turned into rain (again!) and soon there won’t be a trace of it left.